Two Sentenced For Obstruction of Justice

A man and a woman who attempted to obstruct a federal court proceeding by providing a false document were each sentenced on November 25, 2015, to about two years in federal prison.

Asa Adams, age 26, from Waterloo, Iowa, received the prison term after a June 29, 2015, guilty plea to one count of obstruction of justice.

Nicole Wells, age 36, also from Waterloo, Iowa, received the prison term after a July 6, 2015, guilty plea to one count of obstruction of justice.

In plea agreements, Adams and Wells admitted that they worked together to create a false letter to be presented in federal court in a failed attempt to help Adams evade a revocation of his supervised release.  Adams was convicted in 2011 of being a felon in possession of a firearm.  After serving a sixteen-month sentence in federal prison, Adams was placed on supervised release on October 2, 2014.  One of the conditions imposed on supervised release was that Adams not use controlled substances. On December 24, 2014, Adams submitted a urine sample that tested positive for marijuana. His drug use was tested by random urinalysis.  In an attempt to evade having his supervised release revoked and being sent back to prison, Adams recruited his coworker and friend, Nicole Wells, to fabricate a false letter.  The letter, purportedly written by a supervisor at the restaurant where Adams and Wells worked, falsely claimed another employee had brought in marijuana-laced brownies to work.  The letter was not written by the supervisor and there were no marijuana-laced brownies.

Adams provided the false and fictitious letter to his defense attorney, who unwittingly filed it with the federal court as an exhibit.  At a hearing on a petition to revoke Adams’s supervised release, however, the letter was shown to be false when the supervisor and employee who allegedly brought the brownies to work testified to the contrary. 

The court found Adams had tested positive for marijuana because he had used marijuana, and sentenced Adams to a year in federal prison for violating the terms of his supervised release.

Adams and Wells were sentenced in Cedar Rapids by United States District Court Chief Judge Linda R. Reade.  Adams was sentenced to 27 months’ imprisonment (to run consecutively to the one-year sentence previously imposed) and Wells was sentenced to 21 months’ imprisonment.  A special assessment of $100 was imposed on each of them.  Each must also serve a three-year term of supervised release after the prison term.  There is no parole in the federal system.

Adams is being held in the United States Marshal’s custody until he can be transported to a federal prison.

Wells was released on the bond previously set and is to surrender to the Bureau of Prisons on a date yet to be set.

The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney C.J. Williams and investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. 

Court file information at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl.  The case file number is 15-CR-42-LRR. 

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